


I Feel Cold

by RoSH (RoSH95)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Blood and Gore, DEFINITELY not a happy ending, Debatable Character Death, Demonic Entities, Demonic Possession, Drowning, Emotionally ambiguous ending, Ghost Shiro, Graphic mentions of suicide, Horror, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Near Death Experiences, Panic, Visions, Vomiting, but not really a sad one either, past major character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-29 04:38:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13919538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoSH95/pseuds/RoSH
Summary: Ghost Hunter AU where Keith and Pidge are ghost hunters investigating a mansion where several people have experienced hauntings. Keith is highly spiritually sensitive and experiences visions occasionally while investigating a ghost. This time, he has more visions than usual."Keith turns slowly towards her and the glare melts away the second she sees his face. He can guess what she sees; eyes blown wide and glossy, pale skin gone so white that the freckles across his nose stand out like a brand, dark hair falling out of the low ponytail he put it in when they got here.“You’re bleeding,” she says, tapping her finger against her upper lip, below her left nostril."





	I Feel Cold

**Author's Note:**

> At 9k words, this is the longest short story I have ever written. I wrote this piece for a class and made everyone cry, if not in terror, then for how LONG it was. This thing is almost 20 pages single spaced, and over 30 double. Most people submitted stories that were under 20 double spaced. So yeah. There were some tears.
> 
> Warning: I put Major Character Death in the tags just to be safe, but it isn't REALLY Major Character Death. Its Debatable Character Death at best. However, there is still Past Major Character Death, Graphic Depictions of Violence, and Graphic Mentions of Suicide to keep in mind. So if those things squick you out, READ WITH CAUTION!
> 
> Enjoy!

Visions and Vomit

“Starting temp for the living room is sixty-five degrees,” Keith calls to his partner, moving to the night vision camera and readjusting the focus on the musty floral couch that is the sole piece of furniture in the room.

“Dead hour is in ten minutes,” Pidge calls back from the kitchen where they set up camp. “You got everything ready in there?”

Keith starts the camera recording, moving around the room to start the other three cameras as well, before calling back an affirmative. He picks up his own digital camera, changing the filter to night vision, and sets it to record, doing a slow sweep of the room.

“So far, nothing in the living room,” Keith says, both to the camera and Pidge.

He gets no response from either, but that’s to be expected.

He checks the handheld thermometer again—the temperature has dropped a few tenths of a degree, but nothing serious—and then moves into the front hall, planning to do a quick sweep of the ground floor. Most of the reported hauntings have occurred in the living room, but there’s no telling where the ghost will actually appear tonight. If they appear at all.

Everything seems normal until he gets to the back bedroom and walks straight into a memory.

Or… Keith _assumes_ it’s a memory. Everything has gone sort of a disturbing bloodgreyrust—like greyscale but with the colors of blood and rust blended in—and blurry. The only things in focus are an ominous ink black puddle on the floor and a knife with familiar markings on the hilt lying in the puddle, reflecting light from the window to bounce off the walls like fractured mirrors. A distant scream, muddled as though he’s hearing it from underwater, reaches his ears.

He blinks, and everything goes back to normal. The bedroom is empty but for the stripped bed, the wood end table, and bare bookshelf. There’s a sharp pain in his gut and a pounding in his skull. Keith feels disoriented, as though he’s gotten drunk and blacked out for several minutes.

He checks the temperature; sixty-four degrees and dropping slowly.

“Dead hour is in one minute, what the hell are you doing?!” Pidge yells, sounding a little frantic. “Keith?! Get back here!”

“…Hang on,” Keith calls back after a short pause to collect his bearings. “I think I found something in the back bedroom. Temp is sixty-two and falling. Can I get the EMF meter back here?”

He can hear Pidge cursing at him as he turns in a slow circle in the center of the room. On camera, he catches sight of a misty figure by the window—positioned in such a way that they could simply be a trick of the moonlight to a nonbeliever—and goosebumps rise on his forearms and his breath comes out as fog as the temperature of the room plummets.

Keith lifts his eyes from the screen just as Pidge stomps into the room and the chill dissipates like it was never there at all.

Pidge has the EMF meter in her hands and a glare on her face as she snaps, “What the _hell_ , Keith, do you know how long I’ve been trying to get your attention?! You can’t just go gallivanting off in a haunted house with no way for me to reach you!”

Keith turns slowly towards her and the glare melts away the second she sees his face. He can guess what she sees; eyes blown wide and glossy, pale skin gone so white that the freckles across his nose stand out like a brand, dark hair falling out of the low ponytail he put it in when they got here.

“You’re bleeding,” she says, tapping her finger against her upper lip, below her left nostril.

Keith swipes his nose with the back of his hand, startled when it comes back smeared red. His gaze darts around the room again, but there are no more forthcoming visions or figures. He reflects on what he saw; it wasn’t as clear as his visions usually are, less like a scene in a movie and more like a photograph.

“What did you see?” Pidge demands, sharp voice bringing him back to the present. Despite the harsh words and demanding tone, she looks worried.

Keith supposes she would be. After all, his visions are usually so vivid that they follow him back to reality.

Pidge likes to call him things like “sensitive” and “spiritually powerful.” Keith calls it “insanity.” Whatever they call it, Keith has been able to see and communicate with ghosts for as long as he can remember.

“I had a vision,” Keith says. “I saw a black puddle by the window and a knife with a weird symbol carved in to the hilt. Someone was screaming, but I couldn’t hear them clearly. It was almost like I was hearing it from underwater.”

“Nothing else?” Pidge worries, biting at her bottom lip.

Keith thinks back to the sharp pain in his gut and the splitting headache—both of which have faded. He doesn’t want to worry her, especially since they seem to have simply been phantom echoes of the ghost’s pain.

“Just a light headache and the nosebleed,” he lies. “Pretty standard for a minor vision.”

Pidge frowns and turns her attention to the EMF meter, turning it on and moving around the room with it. She starts over by the window, spending a long time holding the meter in every corner of the space, and then moving on to other parts of the room; the door leading to the closet under the stairs, the bed, the bookcase. For lack of anything better to do, Keith watches the temperature on the handheld thermometer climb back up to the mid-sixties from low twenties.

“Maybe we should check for any murders that happened in this house,” Pidge murmurs to herself, standing on her tiptoes to hold the meter in the highest corners of the room. “Well, whatever was in here, it’s gone now.”

“Yeah,” Keith agrees. “Temp is back up to sixty-five.”

Pidge checks her phone. “It’s now ten minutes past midnight,” she grumbles. “We need to get back to the kitchen and begin livestreaming. I’ll check for any murders while you talk.”

“Yeah, okay.”

~

“Sorry about the late start, everybody,” Keith says, nearly a quarter after midnight. “Pidge and I had a couple encounters as we were setting up, which I will get to in a moment. For those of you who are new to our channel, I’m Keith Kogane and my partner is Katie Holt.” Pidge leans in so the camera can see her and waves. “We’re paranormal investigators in Phoenix, Arizona and tonight we’re investigating Evergreen Manor, which has reportedly been a hotspot for ghosts for more than thirty years. However, there’s been a spike in ghost sightings here during the last two years.”

“Last week, my friend Allura Arkwright contacted us about a haunting she experienced in this house,” Pidge explains, taking a seat at her laptop set up at the table and pulling up two pages—the email from Allura and a news page on Evergreen Manor. “She and some friends were trying to do a séance when something attacked them. Two of her friends experienced hallucinations and Allura said she felt a weight on her shoulders and chest, making it hard for her to breathe. When they left the house, the hauntings stopped.”

“From what Allura told us, we figured it was nothing more than a minor poltergeist,” Keith says. “However, after experiencing a vision myself, I’m beginning to believe something else might be happening here.” Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Pidge tap a few buttons on his laptop and the livestream video switches from his face to the footage he took in the bedroom. “When I entered the ground bedroom, I experienced a vision of a knife with strange carvings on the hilt lying in a black puddle by the window. Shortly after, I saw a figure standing by the window and the temperature in the room fell to less than twenty degrees. Both the knife and the figure felt familiar, but that might just be me picking up on their emotions.”

“I’ve been checking to see if there have been any murders or gruesome deaths in the house,” Pidge interrupts and with a few taps the footage switches back to her computer screen, “and, while there have been no _murders_ , there have been a startling number of suicides, spanning as far back as nineteen-seventy-two and as recent as two years ago.” She scrolls through the page and comes to a stop on a gruesome painting of a man splitting himself open on a blade. “The most recent was also the most gruesome. Apparently, the victim used a long knife to gut themself from one side to the other and then dragged the knife through their internal organs and into their heart.”

“ _Ew_ , Pidge, did you really need to give details?” Keith cuts in, feeling vaguely nauseous.

“What?” Pidge asks. “It’s _interesting_.”

“ _Anyways_ ,” Keith says sharply before she can go on, “we’re going to investigate further to find out what’s tying the ghost, or _ghosts_ , to the house and see if we can maybe help them pass on. We’ll continue livestreaming, but there won’t be any commentary or explanations, it will just be the raw footage of what we find and whatever screams of terror we make. Feel free to continue watching, otherwise the edited version will be up next Saturday at midnight, as usual.”

Pidge appears at his side, shoving a digital camera into his hands and leaning up to slip his earpiece on and adjust the mic against his cheek. “Happy hunting!” she chirps, to both the camera and Keith.

~

Keith starts out back in the living room and barely has to walk through the archway before he’s hit with another vision.

This one is… strange. And alarming as well. Because… Keith _knows_ what he’s seeing. It’s a painting. Of _Keith_ , back when his hair was short and he wore glasses instead of contacts—he hasn’t worn glasses since _high school_. And Keith recognizes the style, he remembers watching a steady hand use those wispy brush strokes to recreate his likeness.

And then the painting _moves_ , the Keith-look-alike turning towards him, eyes blown wide and frightened—his features morphing to resemble Keith now—reaching out with a hand before he’s swallowed by darkness and Keith comes out of the vision vomiting.

“—eith?! _Keith_!!!” Pidge’s voice through his earpiece is the first thing he hears as he comes out of his post vision daze.

“Takashi,” he gasps, as soon as he can make his vocal chords work. His head is pounding and his voice is raspy; thankfully he doesn’t appear to have gotten a nosebleed this time.

“Uh, what?” Pidge asks, right next to him, and he blinks up at her, wondering when she got here.

Keith drops his head to hack, and then rasps out, “Takashi Shirogane.” He swallows a few times. “That’s the ghost’s name. He’s—He _was_ my friend.”

Pidge stares at him for a long moment, her eyes wide, her brows furrowed, and her lips pressed in a tight line. Finally, “That name sounds familiar,” she says. “I’m pretty sure my brother had a friend with the last name Shirogane in high school. He called him ‘Shiro’ but I dunno what else that could be a nickname for.”

Keith snorts in amusement, but his eyes are wet. “Everyone called him ‘Shiro,’” he whispers. “Sometimes it felt like I was the only one who knew his full name.”

Pidge pulls her cellphone out of her pocket, barely acknowledging his words—which Keith is grateful for, at the moment. “I’m going to call my brother and find out what the hell happened to Shiro,” she says, stabbing fiercely at the buttons on her phone. “For starters, I wanna know when he died.”

Keith’s stomach plummets at her words. He remembers the most recent death to have happened at the house was two years ago. He lost contact with Shiro over five years ago after Shiro graduated and joined the air force. The most recent death—the most _gruesome_ —would have happened shortly after he came home.

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Keith says.

“Don’t puke on my shoes, please,” Pidge replies absently, tapping her foot as she waits for her brother to answer. Evidently, he answers with a scolding, because Pidge greets him curtly. “I don’t _care_ how late it is, Keith is puking his guts up right now because the ghost of his dead boyfriend is sending him visions and you’re going to tell me everything you know about Takashi Shirogane.”

There’s a pause and Keith dry heaves a couple times before deciding he’s probably expelled everything from his stomach at this point and sits back on his heels.

“ _Do not_ make me repeat myself, Matthew,” Pidge snaps.

Keith’s vision blurs suddenly and he curses at the feeling of another vision coming. At least this time he’s getting a warning.

As reality fades away, Keith feels himself pitch forward, but he doesn’t hit the floor. Instead, he just falls. And then he keeps falling. It’s almost pitch black, but every once in a while, he’ll catch sight of something in the shadows just beyond his reach. His heart rate spikes every time the thing lurches towards him, but it always passes over his head.

In the back of his mind, there’s a faint, but familiar voice saying, “ _Get out, get out, get out…_ ”

Keith hits the floor face first, shuddering violently as his body fights the last dregs of the vision. He turns his head to the side and blinks, but his vision is blurry and his head feels full of cotton.

“Oh, shit, hold that thought, Matt,” Pidge’s muffled voice says. “I think Keith just had another vision. Damn. This is the third one tonight. I don’t know how much longer he can do this.”

Keith drifts through the muffled noises until something gentle touches his shoulder and jerks him back to his body.

“Keith?” Pidge’s voice is much clearer this time. “I’m gonna roll you over now.” she takes his hand and squeezes, her touch becoming firmer on his shoulder. “Squeeze twice if you can hear me.”

Keith squeezes her hand twice.

“Oh, thank god.”

There’s a brief moment of disorientation as she rolls him onto his back before his vision clears again and Pidge’s face comes into view above him, her copper hair hanging between them and tickling his face.

“Hey, Matt?” Pidge speaks into the phone again. “I’m gonna put you on speaker so Keith can hear you too. We _need_ to know what happened and I think Keith needs something to hold onto in reality for a little while.”

Keith turns his head to keep Pidge in his sight as she moves, inexplicably terrified that if he loses sight of her, she’ll disappear.

Pidge taps at her phone a few times and then sets it on the floor out of the way of Keith’s body.

“Alright, you’re on speaker,” Pidge says.

“Great,” Matt says with little enthusiasm. Keith can’t blame him with how late it is. “As I was saying, Shiro sort of dropped off the grid when he joined the air force. Which was, like, _super_ uncharacteristic of him. I heard from him a grand total of _once_ during that first year he was gone and once at the beginning of the second year and then he just… stopped communicating. I don’t think his family even heard from him much.

“When Shiro came back he was… I dunno. Different,” Matt continues, his voice tight. “I think he was lonely, but he didn’t know how to reach out. I still feel guilty for it, because I didn’t even think to reach out. I was so caught up with school that I didn’t even notice my best friend was hurting.

“And then I came back for Christmas break and found out Shiro had killed himself not even two weeks prior.” Matt sighs heavily, the sound crackling through the speakers. “I don’t even know what happened. His family never told anyone the full story, and then they just packed up and left. Even if he was depressed, Shiro was never the type to think about suicide. Especially not something so horrible.”

“People change when they’re depressed,” Pidge murmurs, just loud enough that the speakers can pick it up. “But I agree that there’s something more to this. Do you know where he died?”

“They never told me where they found him,” Matt answers.

“Evergreen Manor,” Keith rasps, surprised that his voice even comes out at all.

“The Suicide House?” Matt questions, sounding surprised. “Damn. That’s even worse.”

“How could it get _worse_ than killing himself?” Pidge snaps.

“Well… that place is totally haunted,” Matt says, sounding hesitant.

“Yeah, we noticed,” Pidge deadpans.

“Right. Ghost hunters. How could I forget?” Matt grumbles. “Anyways, when we were in high school me, Shiro, and a couple other friends went to check the place out. I don’t even know how to begin describing what happened there.”

Keith pushes himself up into a sitting position, interest peaked.

“Let me guess,” Pidge says, a little distracted as she keeps her eyes locked on Keith, “hallucinations, violent attacks, voices in your head?”

“How did you know?”

“Our client had the same thing happen to her.” She pauses, then adds, “In the same house.”

“Jesus Christ.” There’s a pregnant pause as they wait for Matt to continue. Finally, he says, “Shiro got the worst of it, but we all had hallucinations. From what he told me, Shiro saw three things in his visions; a beautiful woman in a white gown—that looked like she had stepped straight out of the late eighteen-hundreds—, the front door of the house slamming shut and locking us in, and a black demon that grinned and giggled at him every time he tried to find another way out of the house.

“I didn’t see anything nearly as coherent as that,” Matt says. “Mostly shadowy figures with claws and bugs crawling up my legs that I couldn’t get off no matter what I did. Jack said he saw the door slamming shut, but no one else had hallucinations with a woman or a demon in them. Shiro was the only one who got physically attacked—when we were leaving something grabbed his arm and clawed him up pretty bad—and the other two said they heard voices telling them to get out of the house.

“None of us knew what to make of what happened that night.” The speakers crackle again as Matt heaves a sigh. “But—even back then I was suspicious—I think something evil lives in that house. Everyone else figured it was just a poltergeist messing with us—even Shiro, and he was _attacked_ —but I just… had a bad feeling about the place. I’ve avoided it ever since.”

“And Shiro killed himself here,” Pidge says.

“Well, now that I know that, I _definitely_ think there’s something evil in that house,” Matt says. “Like I said earlier, Shiro was never the type to choose suicide. He would have gotten help if he was that depressed. But all the evidence pointed to suicide, so no one could say otherwise.”

“He was possessed,” Keith says, the epiphany tumbling gracelessly into his head. The others pause, and Pidge gives him a strange look, so he elaborates. “There’s something evil in the house, Shiro visits the house and experiences strange visions that no one else sees. Fast forward a few years and Shiro comes back to the house he was attacked in and kills himself even though it’s extremely out of character for him. The evidence points to suicide because it _was_. Shiro just wasn’t the one in control.”

Looking back on it, Keith will pinpoint that as the moment everything went to shit.

 

Top Ten Worst Ways to Die

“So, what do we do now?” Pidge asks, after they say goodbye to Matt. “Do we keep investigating or get the fuck out? _I_ , for one, vote we get the fuck out.”

“I think you should leave,” Keith says softly. “I’m pretty sure it’s too late for me at this point.”

“ _Excuse_ me?” Pidge hisses. “Either we leave together or not at all, Keith. I’m _definitely_ not leaving you here to deal with an evil fuck by yourself! And _what’s this about it being too late for you bullshit_?!”

“Remember, Shiro was acting weird even before he died,” Keith says. “The spirit was probably already influencing his decisions by the time he graduated. I think the same thing is happening to me. If I leave the house, it might slow the process down, but eventually the spirit will consume me. I need to get rid of it while I have the chance.”

“That doesn’t rule out the option of leaving and coming back when we’re better prepared to deal with this!” Pidge argues.

“I can’t explain it,” Keith groans, scrubbing at his forehead. “I just get the feeling that if we leave now we won’t be able to come back until it’s too late.”

He lifts his eyes and they catch on the huge bay windows overlooking the backyard. Illuminated by the moonlight is Shiro, his wraith as clear as if he were physically there. His eyes are focused on Keith, and when he notices Keith looking at him, he offers a sad smile.

Keith wants to reach out to him—wants to call to him and hear his voice for the first time in years, deep and calming—but he can feel another vision coming on, and he reaches blindly for Pidge’s hand instead and squeezes hard as a heavy weight presses down on his chest and breathing becomes difficult. His sight washes out, a suffocating white fog settling over his eyes. There’s a sultry voice whispering in his ear, but he can’t make out the words over the sound of a faint screaming in the distance.

Keith automatically tries to focus on the words, trying to make them out and understand the meaning behind them, but the scream grows louder, a cacophony of voices blurring together and drowning the first voice out. He can’t be sure, but as the whispers fade away, Keith thinks it sounds vaguely annoyed.

He thinks that’s the end of it, but the vision doesn’t stop there. Instead, he finds himself back in the bedroom, with sunlight streaming through the windows. There’s a knife laying on the windowsill—the same one from before—the markings carved into the hilt thrown into sharp clarity, drawing Keith’s eyes. He gets a good look at them this time, and ice drops into his chest when he recognizes them.

They’re ancient Egyptian symbols, and he only knows them because he studied them after inheriting a knife from his mother when his father left. The markings on his own knife mean ‘knowledge’ and ‘protection.’ The ones on this knife mean ‘trap’ and ‘death.’

A compulsion settles over his body—the sultry voice is back in his head, but its distant, like hearing it through glass—and he moves towards the knife.

“ _Slit your wrists, cut your throat, gouge out your eyes, gut yourself, cut out your heart, spill your entrails…_ ”

Keith feels his heartrate skyrocket as the voice and compulsion settle in his veins; as he picks up the knife and turns it over in his hands. The distant screaming is starting up again, but it’s too faint to really hear over the voice in his head.

Keith holds the knife in both hands and turns the blade towards himself. His heart is trying to beat its way out of his ribcage and he tries to scream—to stop himself and drop the knife—but he’s lost control of his own body. The blade bites the skin of his side and he plunges it into his flank, drawing it horizontally through his gut—

“ _—Keith!!_ ”

He comes back to himself with a jolt, disoriented by the cacophony of noise he’s hearing and scrambling for his stomach, still feeling split open on the blade. He realizes he’s screaming and someone is holding him down, and he thrashes violently to get loose.

“Keith!” Pidge’s voice cuts through his panic, separating the veil shrouding him and drawing him back to reality.

Pidge is hovering directly above him, her hands warm and soft on his face. Keith’s scream cuts off sharply as he chokes on an inhale and he thrashes again to roll onto his side as he feels his stomach turn.

Whoever is holding him down—it’s not Pidge, he can still feel her hands on his face and neck—rolls him over and he coughs up watery bile that burns his throat and tongue. When he can finally breathe without choking or vomiting again, the hands move from his arms and legs to his back and chest, supporting him into a sitting position instead of pinning him down.

Keith blinks away the blur from his eyes and sees Pidge’s friends, Lance and Hunk, sitting next to him. Their eyes are wide and worried, and Hunk has one large hand on the back of Keith’s neck while Lance is trying to shove a bottle of water against his mouth.

Shiro’s wraith is hovering behind them, invisible to everyone else. Keith keeps his eyes on him as Hunk helps tilt his head back and he gulps down the water with relief, washing the taste of bile out of his mouth.

“How long was I out?” he croaks as soon as he can, tearing his eyes away from Shiro to look at Pidge, but keeping the wraith in his peripherals for fear of him disappearing again. His presence is comforting, the same way it always was in life.

Pidge exchanges looks with Lance and Hunk. “Over thirty minutes,” she answers. “I called Hunk when you didn’t come out of it after five, and he and Lance got here ten minutes ago. We were gonna call nine-one-one if you didn’t snap out of it.”

“Don’t,” Keith snaps. “If you call nine-one-one, I’ll lose my chance. I’ll be fine, just let me deal with it.”

“You were in trance for _thirty minutes_ , Keith!” Pidge snaps back. “This is the fourth one tonight, what if you can’t come back next time?!”

“Better that than the demon forcing me to shove a red-hot poker down my throat or drill a hole in my heart!” Keith growls. “I just experienced what she made Shiro do, and it was _awful_. She’s been doing it for years, and she’ll keep doing it if we don’t exorcise her.”

“ _We. Are. Not. Exorcists!_ ” Pidge practically spits in his face, jabbing her finger into his sternum with every word. “We are ghost hunters! Investigating and documenting the paranormal is our job. Exorcising demons that try to kill us is _not_!”

“She’ll kill me if we don’t do anything!” Keith shouts back, shoving her off him and swaying unsteadily to his feet. Shiro’s wraith lurches forward as if to catch him but freezes at the last second, remembering he’s intangible.

“ _Its suicide staying here!!_ ” Pidge screams, scrambling to her own feet and attempting to tower over Keith even though she’s a good head shorter.

“Its suicide no matter what I do!” Keith screams back. “I have to at least _try_!!”

“ _I CAN’T LOSE YOU!!_ ”

Keith stumbles back at the force of her words, their meaning flooding him.

“Dad died, and Mom left, and Matt is hardly ever there anymore,” Pidge sobs, reaching up to wipe tears and snot from her face. “You’re the only family I have here anymore. Don’t you leave me too!”

Keith’s heart skips a beat as he remembers all the reasons they were drawn together; the mutual abandonment issues, the missing families, and a whole slew of other problems that led them to meet during group therapy on Thursday evenings.

He reaches out and grabs her by the shoulders, hauling her into his arms.

“I won’t leave you,” he promises. “Never by choice.”

Pidge sobs and burrows deeper against his chest, wrapping her arms around his waist and squeezing tight. Keith looks over her shoulder at Hunk and Lance, who are standing close together and whispering seriously to each other. Lance seems to be arguing something, but Hunk’s mind is clearly made up, from the look in his eyes.

Lance finally throws his hands in the air in a clear sign of submission and turns away from Hunk with a scowl.

Hunk wears a smug smile for half a moment before he turns to Keith with a sort of grim look on his face.

“We’ll stay with you, if you’re seeing this through,” he says, and Pidge jerks her head up from Keith’s chest to stare with wide and wild eyes and Hunk. “It’s dangerous to be here on your own, and we don’t want anything to happen to either of you.”

“But its dangerous!” Pidge protests, shoving away from Keith to cross her arms defensively.

“Its dangerous for you too!” Lance snaps back. “If you can be here, so can we!”

“This is our job!” Pidge argues. “You don’t have any obligation to be here!”

“You _just said_ it wasn’t your job!!” Lance exclaims, face flushing with anger. “You don’t have any obligation to be here either! We have an obligation to you as your _friends_!”

“Well, we have an obligation as ghost hunters to see this through!” Pidge growls. “We—”

“We—I—have an obligation to Shiro,” Keith interrupts, his voice soft, but cutting smoothly across Pidge’s. He meets Shiro’s eyes as he says it and watches a flood of emotions wash through his grey irises, starting with fondness and filtering through to sadness and regret.

He wonders what Shiro regrets. Keith knows what _he_ regrets; staying aloof and disconnected from Shiro for so long, pretending he wasn’t falling hard and fast for him once Shiro proved he wasn’t going to leave like everyone else, not kissing him under the stars at his graduation party.

Would things have been different if he had?

Maybe Shiro would have asked for help before the spirit took over. Maybe Keith would have been at Evergreen Manor the first time and the spirit would have locked on him instead. Maybe Keith would have known what was happening right away and been able to stop it. Maybe, then, they would have both been alive. Maybe they could have been happy together.

Keith can’t change the past.

But perhaps he can change the future.

“We’re with you, Keith,” Lance says, his face and voice grave. “We’ll help you see this through.”

“You’re my brother,” Pidge declares. “I won’t let any demon or evil spirit take you from me.”

Keith looks between all three of them, and then looks to Shiro standing to his right. Shiro reaches out one pale, transparent hand, stopping just inches from his cheek. His mouth moves to form words that Keith can’t hear, but he understands the meaning.

“Keith?” Pidge asks, squinting into the air just left of where Shiro is standing. “Is something there?”

“Takashi,” Keith replies, reaching up to brush his fingers against the air of the back of Shiro’s hand. “It’s okay,” he says to Shiro. “Do what you need to.”

Shiro’s eyes glow vibrant purple as he plunges his right arm into Keith’s chest. He shudders violently as he feels something icy cold pass over his heart. He can hear Pidge and Hunk calling to him, but they sound far away. His vision is taken up by the violet of Shiro’s glowing eyes and his hearing is clotted with the sound of hundreds of voices clamoring in his head.

“Listen to the voices,” Shiro whispers in his ear, and Keith is surprised that he can hear him now. “As long as you can hear them screaming, she can’t take you. I’m going to fuse my spirit to yours. You’ll be closer to the spirit world that way and it will make it harder for her to control you. You need to find her core. Destroy it, and she’ll lose all her power. She keeps it under the house somewhere—it’s the only way to get rid of her.”

“What about you?” Keith asks. “If you fuse yourself with me, won’t you lose yourself?”

“I’m already dead, Keith,” Shiro says, his eyes wistful and nostalgic. “I’ve been stuck here for too long, its time for me to fade.”

“Don’t you want to pass on?” Keith begs. “If you fade, that’s it. You’re gone forever.”

“If it can save your life, I’ll do anything.”

Keith feels something fire hot and heavy slot into place next to his heart and he cries out in protest. Begs Shiro not to do it; not to sacrifice himself for Keith.

He gasps in a breath and it burns in his lungs. He snaps his eyes open—he didn’t even realize he closed them. Pidge’s face is the first thing he sees, her eyes red and swollen, tear tracks on her face. Lance and Hunk are crowding next to her, both their faces pale as sheets. Shiro is nowhere to be seen.

“Takashi!” Keith cries out, gasping around the fire in his lungs.

He feels Shiro’s gentle heat soothe the burn and sobs in despair and relief. He can’t see Shiro anymore, but he can feel him.

“What happened?” Pidge is crying. “You were talking to Shiro, but we didn’t understand what you were saying, and then you started freaking out and begging him not to do something.”

Keith shakes his head, unable to respond through his tears. He curls protectively around the heat in his chest—the spot where he knows Shiro’s spirit resides.

He can hear Pidge speaking softly to him, but he can’t make any sense of the words. He can still hear the screaming of hundreds of ghosts in his ears. There’s a sense of urgency coming from Shiro’s heat that finally makes him wipe the tears from his face, sniffling miserably.

“In—in the b-basement,” Keith manages to gasp out, shuddering through the force of his repressed sobs, “the—the spirit’s c-core is in the basement. If we c-can find it and destroy it, we can beat her.”

Pidge exchanges looks with Hunk and Lance. They nod to her and start moving around the room, gathering up their equipment. Keith is about to protest—they can’t leave now!—but Pidge interrupts before he can, asking, “What did Shiro do?”

Keith swallows and presses his right hand to his chest. “He fused his spirit with mine,” he spits, roughly wiping away the tears that escape. “He gave me time to find the core. We _can’t_ leave now, Pidge, we’re _so close_.” _I can’t let his sacrifice be in vain._

“We’re not leaving,” Pidge soothes. “We told you, we’re with you to the end.” She gestures to Lance and Hunk, carrying the cameras and other equipment to the stairs that lead to the basement. “I figure if we’re going to face down a demon, we better damn well make some money off it.”

Keith coughs out a laugh. “Go big or go home, yeah?”

“Fuck yeah.”

 

Kill it With Fire

The Evergreen Manor basement is somehow less decrepit than the rest of the house, with chipped, wooden pillars and ornate archways creating a large open space. The stairs descend on the right side of the room, and there’s an archway opening into a second room directly across from them. A second archway opens into another room on the left. Three pillars stand near the back wall.

As the others gather in the center of the room and Pidge explains how to use each piece of equipment, Keith peers through the archway across from the stairs, feeling restless. Is it his imagination, or are the ghosts quieter than they were before? He touches his knife, strapped to the small of his back. He knows it won’t protect him from any spirits, but he feels better, knowing it’s there.

Keith can’t see anything in the first room—aside from more pillars, some cobwebs, and a bit of rubble—so he moves to the second archway on the left. It opens into a long hallway, with more pillars against the walls on both sides and a heavy black door at the end.

The door seems promising, but Keith doesn’t want to get too far away from the group. Not only would Pidge scold him, but it’s such a horror-movie-cliché thing to do. He scans the rest of the room, finding a few wooden beams that could be hiding something, but turns up nothing when he investigates.

He flits back to his friends as Pidge finishes her explanation, helping Lance and Hunk manage the settings of the thermal and night vision cameras and set them to recording. He distributes the EMF meter, thermometer, and digital camera among them, keeping his own digital camera for himself.

“This is so dumb,” Lance mutters under his breath. “We’re trying to kill a demon and you’re concerned with broadcasting it to your followers?”

“C’mon, Lance,” Hunk says, equally hushed. “There’s some practicality to it. If something goes wrong, there are people watching who can call for help.”

“Do you really believe that any of them think this is real?” Lance argues. “They probably think this is all staged or something.”

“I’m sure there’s at least one person watching who believes its real,” Hunk whispers back.

“Shut up,” Pidge hisses. “We’re here for a reason. We brought along the equipment for documentation. This is probably the most dangerous haunting we’ve ever investigated, and I want it documented for future reference. And even if our followers think its staged, they’ll still pay us to do it.”

“I’m not backing out,” Lance says, defensive. “I just think its stupid to haul all this equipment around.”

“Well you don’t have to,” Pidge snaps. “Give the thermometer to me if you don’t want it.”

Lance scoffs and turns away, subtly clutching the thermometer closer to his chest.

“That’s what I thought,” Pidge mutters.

Keith rolls his eyes. “There’s a big black door down that hall that looks promising,” he says. “I didn’t find anything in this room, and the other room is empty, but I guess I could be missing something.”

“Let’s check out that door first,” Pidge says. “We can always come back if we don’t find anything.”

Keith swallows down protests that they’re running on borrowed time—there’s no telling when it will run out—and leads them down the hall and to the door, which stands almost twice as tall as him. It takes both Keith and Hunk pushing against the door to open it, and they all spill into a circular room.

There are dusty shelves lining the room, filled to bursting with leather-bound books. An intricate circle drawn in chalk decorates the floor, marred by a bloodstain spilling across it.

“This looks like a summoning circle,” Lance remarks, circling it cautiously.

“Don’t touch it,” Pidge warns. “If the lines are unbroken, then it could still be dangerous.”

“Don’t worry,” Keith murmurs, kneeling beside a break in the circle. “Its broken here. This thing is harmless. But that explains how the demon got here, at least.”

“Best to still exercise caution,” Pidge says. “What’s the temp in here, Lance?”

“Uh…” Lance juggles his thermal camera a little so he can read the thermometer. “Fifty-eight degrees.”

“Fairly standard for a basement,” Keith says, panning his camera over the full image of the circle.

“Do we know what it is we’re looking for?” Hunk asks, trailing his fingers along the spines of a couple books.

Pidge and Lance look to Keith, who shrugs. “Shiro only said that the core was in the basement,” Keith says. “He never said what it was.”

“Great,” Lance scoffs, rolling his eyes. “So all we really know is a very _vague_ idea of where it is.”

“I’ll know it when I see it,” Keith offers.

“Oh, yeah, that’s _real_ helpful,” Lance snarks.

“Oh, shut up,” Pidge snaps. “Let’s just spread out and look for anything that could be a demonic entity’s core. And _for the love of all that is holy_ stay away from that circle!”

Keith isn’t the only one rolling his eyes, but they all follow her orders, spreading out in the room and investigating every nook and crevice they can find. Keith and Hunk start on either side of the room, going over the bookshelves while Pidge and Lance search the various desks shoved up against the walls. Keith is fairly certain the core isn’t going to be a book, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be something _inside_ a book, so he pulls handfuls down at a time, checking the pages for any discrepancies that could indicate something being tucked between the pages.

They pass several minutes in silence like this, before Lance heaves a sigh. “I’ve gone through every drawer and cupboard in these desks three times over,” he says. “I don’t think it’s in here.”

Keith casts his gaze around the room, and finds he has to agree. “We must have missed something in those first two rooms, then,” he says. “It’s down here somewhere.”

They all trudge back to the main room, finding it exactly as they left it. Keith nearly jumps out of his skin when he hears a whisper of sound in his head, cutting through the distant screams. He’s not sure if it was the demon’s voice or something less sinister, but he doesn’t want to take chances.

Instead he strides across the room to the first archway, crossing into the empty room. He moves to the center of the room, turning in a circle to take in as much of it as he can, trying to find something he missed. Pidge follows him in, holding her EMF meter aloft, while Hunk and Lance hover in the archway.

For a moment, everything is quiet. And then a great _crack!_ sounds throughout the room as a fracture splinters across the floor. Pidge shrieks and Keith’s heart leaps into his throat before the ground is collapsing beneath them and sending them plummeting into the darkness below.

Keith lands with a splash in icy cold water, choking and quickly losing his bearings of which way is up and he nearly screams as something slimy brushes against his ankle, kicking out hard and thrashing to get away from it, only to bump into another slimy something that sends shudders up and down his spine.

He’s nearly out of his mind with panic, unable to figure out which way is up and quickly running out of what little air he managed to inhale before he went under. The screaming in his head is almost deafening now, laced with desperation and panic that does nothing to calm his own terror. It feels as if there are hands pressing him further into the depths and no matter how Keith kicks and thrashes, he can’t escape.

His struggles grow weak as his consciousness dims, a heavy shadow falling over his mind.

_Is this how I die?_ he wonders.

The heat in his chest sears suddenly as something golden flashes beyond his eyelids, and Keith breaks the surface of the water with a gasp. He flounders for a moment before small hands latch onto his arm, pulling him forwards—towards safety, he hopes.

“Holyshitholyshit _holyshit_ —” he can hear Pidge muttering, her voice panicked.

“Are you guys okay?” Lance’s voice calls from above. “What was that light?”

“ _I’m_ okay, but Keith almost drowned!” Pidge yells back, dragging Keith onto a rocky shore where he rolls onto his stomach and promptly throws up for the fourth time tonight. “I think he had a vision or something!”

“We’re gonna try to find a way down!” Hunk says. “I think I can see stairs against the wall there, so there must be a secret entrance somewhere. You guys stay right there!”

“Can’t really go anywhere, at the moment!” Pidge replies.

Keith spits and wipes a shaking hand against his mouth. He shuffles out of the way of his sick before collapsing back onto the rock.

“Are you okay?” Pidge asks, sounding seconds away from full blown hysteria. “Stupid question, I know, of course you’re not. But, like, on a scale of one to ten how okay are you?”

“Three,” Keith rasps.

“Okay, yeah, that’s pretty bad,” Pidge says, her voice climbing an octave higher.

“Calm down,” Keith says, sounding far steadier than he feels. “Tell me what you can see.”

“Okay, uh, we’re on an island of some sort,” Pidge says. “There’s more land against the walls of the cavern, and, like, a peninsula by the stairs. Its not far, we should be able to swim it, but the water is creeping me out. Did you feel something slimy while you were in there? I swear something grabbed my ankle. Oh, hey, I think there’s a pedestal thingy on this island.”

She babbles on, listing all the things she can see and even what she can hear and smell too. Keith tunes her out, lifting his head to look at the pedestal she spotted.

Its less a pedestal and more simply a jagged rock jutting out of the ground. There’s a small, roundish stone perched on top of it. Keith knows, just by looking at it, that the stone is the core they’ve been looking for.

“Pidge,” he whispers, “I found it.”

“What—?”

“Hey, guys, we found a secret door in the circle room!” Hunk’s voice echoes across the cavern, and Keith and Pidge both turn to see him and Lance carefully making their way down the stairs. “It was under one of the desks, that’s why we didn’t see it before.”

“I found the core!” Keith calls back. “It’s on this island!”

“Whoa, really?” Lance asks. “What is it?”

“A rock?” Keith says, unsure, getting to his feet to study it. Its sort of round, smooth, but with bumps and grooves in it. It doesn’t look anything like any sort of natural rock Keith knows. In fact, it looks more like— “It’s a fossilized heart!”

Pidge pops up next to him, looking intrigued and repulsed as Lance and Hunk make twin sounds of disgust.

“You’re right,” Pidge says. “See, this is the aorta, these are the openings for the brachiophalic trunk, left carotid artery, and left subclavian artery, and down here is the inferior vena cava. This must be thousands of years old! How did it get here?”

“It probably came with the demon,” Keith says dryly. “Who cares how it got here or where it came from, lets just destroy it so we can go home.”

“How are we gonna destroy it?” Pidge asks, staring intently at the heart. “Throw it on the ground?”

“No, if we’re doing this, we’re doing it right,” Keith says. “We’ve gotta make sure there’s nothing left of it. We’re gonna burn it.”

Pidge looks at him skeptically. “And how do you propose we do that?” she asks. “It’ll take more than a lighter to burn this thing to nothing.”

“I hadn’t thought that far,” Keith admits sheepishly.

“What do we have with us?” Pidge asks, emptying out her pockets. “I have a pocket knife and a lighter. And the EMF meter, which is probably busted at this point.”

“I have my mom’s knife,” Keith offers, pulling it from its sheath at his back. “I also have a pocket knife, some string, and a first aid kit. Oh, and there’s a switchblade in my shoe.”

Pidge blinks at him. “Why in the seven hells do you have _so many knives_ on you?”

“Don’t judge me,” Keith promptly fires back. “Let’s take it back to the others and see what they think.”

“You mean we have to swim through the sea of unidentified slimy objects?” Pidge whines.

Keith shrugs and picks up the heart. The second his hands touch it the voices in his head go silent. He barely has time to get out an, “Oh shit,” before his senses are flooded with nothingness and a voice in his head purrs, “ _You thought you could kill me? I’ve been feeding on you mortal’s souls for over thirty years. I’m far more powerful than you could ever imagine!_ ”

Keith tries to move; to drop the heart or bring his hands to his head or move his feet, but his limbs have gone stiff and unresponsive. He tries to scream, but his mouth won’t open and all that comes out is a faint whimper.

“ _I’ve taken full control of your body,_ ” the demon cackles and Keith feels his left arm moving without his consent, clutching his mother’s dagger and bringing the blade to his throat. “ _Not even your sweetheart can save you now._ ”

Keith feels a foreign swell of emotion as Shiro rises up within him, taking strength from Keith and pushing the demon back. He’s barely even conscious of it, but Keith remembers the Egyptian hieroglyph for fire, sees it glowing in his mind. He tries to channel the thought to Shiro, but Shiro is fully immersed in his battle with the demon, and the message slips right through him. Instead, Keith watches as the symbol carves itself onto his mother’s knife and the blade glows red hot.

Keith feels a sudden surge of strength and breaks free of the demon’s hold, plunging the blade—instead of into his own neck—down into the demon’s core. There’s a surge of heat as the heart bursts into flames and Keith hears the demon scream out in agony.

He collapses to his knees as his body suddenly becomes his own again, the demon vanishing from his head and leaving him physically and spiritually exhausted.

Shiro’s spirit collapses back within him, weak and fading quickly.

“ _Keith!_ ” Pidge is screaming, he can hear her now, but she’s faint. “ _Drop the heart! Your hands are burning!_ ”

Keith forces his hands to respond and release their grip on his mother’s blade and the heart, but his consciousness fades quickly and he isn’t sure he managed before plunging into darkness.

 

Reverie

Keith’s eyes flutter open to blue skies, a golden wheat field, and Shiro standing in front of him. A sense of peace and contentment settles in his bones, though he isn’t sure where he is or how he got there. There’s a thought in the back of his mind that says there’s something important he’s supposed to be doing, but he ignores it in favor of basking in Shiro’s smile and the warmth of the sun.

“Keith,” Shiro says, and Keith gives a lazy blink in response. “Are you alright?”

“‘M good,” Keith slurs, words feeling heavy and drunk. “Yer _really_ pretty, yanno?” He drags his eyes over the line of Shiro’s body, taking in his short, dark hair, slanted grey eyes, and the powerful lines of his arms and legs.

Shiro blinks, looking surprised. “Keith?”

“I missed you,” Keith sighs, falling back and feeling the ground sink beneath him like a water mattress. He stares unblinking into the blue skies, getting lost in it like he could find the stars if he just _looked_ hard enough. “I r’member wond’ring if it was s’mthing I said or did,” Keith hears himself say, but his spirit is far away.

“ _Never_ ,” Shiro says, appearing beside Keith, hovering over him. “You never did anything wrong. You were so, _so_ good for me. I was scared that if I stayed with you, she would sense how powerful you were. I _never_ wanted this for you—I thought if I stayed away, maybe you would be safe. I’m _sorry_ , Keith.”

“I never blamed you,” Keith replies, sinking back into his body as he shifts his focus to Shiro. “I wouldn’t want me around either.”

He blinks and is surprised to feel a tear escape the corner of his eye. It trickles down the side of his face toward his ear until is progress is impeded by Shiro wiping it away.

“I always want you around,” Shiro whispers, almost reverently. “I love you.”

Keith feels he should be surprised by the words, but the instant Shiro says them, he gets the sense that he knew it all along. “I love you too.”

Shiro chuckles and wipes tears away from his own face, looking at Keith with a watery smile. “God, we’re such _idiots_ ,” he says, “waiting until we’re both dying to say it.”

“Is that what’s happening?” Keith murmurs, tilting his head to take in the way the sky is darkening to a midnight blue. He jolts as his most recent memories flood through him, destroying the peace this place built. “The demon!” he exclaims, sitting bolt upright. “What happened?! Did we kill her??”

Shiro grabs him by the shoulders and pulls him in, burying his face in Keith’s hair. “We beat her,” he says, his voice shaking like a leaf. “She’s dead, she’s gone forever.”

Keith sags in relief, letting his body rest more fully against Shiro. “What happens now?” he asks.

“I… don’t know,” Shiro says. “I thought I would fade but—” he cuts himself off suddenly and clutches Keith tighter.

Keith understands why when he feels Shiro’s arms sink through his skin. “What’s happening?!” he asks, gripping Shiro’s shoulders with nails like claws.

“I think… you’re going back,” Shiro answers. He looks scared and sad.

“No!” Keith cries, though he’s not sure what he’s protesting, only that he doesn’t want to be separated from Shiro. “I just found you! I can’t lose you again!”

Shiro silences him by pressing his mouth against Keith’s. It feels like an eternity and yet far too short a time that they stay pressed together like that, before Shiro pulls back, just enough to say, “I love you. I always did, I always will.”

“I love you too,” Keith replies, his words choked with tears. “I’ll find a way to save you. Just wait for me!”

“ _Always_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point I feel like I'm just screaming into the void, but PLEASE leave kudos and a comment if you enjoyed!! Even if its just an "I love your story!" Even if its a BOOK REPORT, your feedback makes my day and gives me the motivation to write more! Seriously. Tell me what you like, tell me what you hate, tell me what made you laugh, tell me what made you cry. Tell me what made you sick to your stomach and I'll reply with a "SAME FAM" and we can scream about how awful this is. I WANT TO HEAR YOUR THOUGHTS!!!

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like I'm just screaming it into the void at this point, but comments are the lifeblood of authors, so if you enjoyed this story, LEAVE A COMMENT AND KUDOS!!!! Even if its something as little as "I love your story!" Even if its something as extensive as a BOOK REPORT with references and everything, I WANT TO HEAR IT! Your comments and feedback give me life <3 Tell me what you liked or didn't like. Tell me what worked and what didn't. Tell me about that part that squicked you out so hard you had to stop reading and I'll reply with a "SAME FAM!"


End file.
